Resources for Kesubos 74

1.     The גמרא says in the name of ר׳ יוחנן that חליצה needs the כוונה of both the man and woman or else it is פּסול. There is a crucial תשובה from the חכם צבי in סימן א (which we mentioned in יבמות) that discusses what the nature of חליצה is: is it a מצוה like סוכה or is it just a קנין like גט. There are several major נפקא מינהs. First, if neither the יבם or יבמה have any interest in getting remarried, is there a need for them to do חליצה? Second, if מצוות צריכות כוונה do you need to have כוונה למצוה? The conclusion of the חכם צבי is that it is merely a קנין like a גט and therefore no כוונה למצווה is needed. Our גמרא that says you need כוונה means כוונת קונה ומקנה but not כוונה למצווה. The חכם צבי says that this answers תוספות’s question in יבמות as to why a קטנה can do חליצה when she doesn’t have דעת when our גמרא says you need her דעת as well for the חליצה to work. The חכם צבי explains based on the above that if you hold the דעת we are referring to is דעת קנין then that can be achieved with דעת אחרת מקנה supplied by the חולץ.  The קצות החושן in סימן רע"ה ס"ק ד disagrees and says that דעת אחרת מקנה means that the person receiving the item needs no independent דעת at all. If so, why do we say that for חליצה you need עד שיכוונו שניהם? You need only the חולץ’s דעת! It must be that it is a מצוה and you therefore need her כוונה. The שערי יושר in שער ז׳ אות ו says a beautiful פּשט: He says that the כוונה our גמרא speaks of cannot possibly mean the classic כוונת קנין since this isn’t a regular קנין. By a typical קנין something leaves one person’s רשות and enters another person’s רשות. In that case you need the דעת of both parties. However, in our case of חליצה, it is leaving a רשות of one person but that’s it, so you should only need the כוונה of the חולץ and it should be able to be done even against the woman’s will. If you say it is כוונת מצוה that won’t work either since the שולחן ערוך in סימן קס"ט סעיף מ"ד just says that she needs to be מכוון להיות מותרת לשוק על ידי החליצה. That doesn’t sound like כוונה לצאת מצוה. Rather, he suggests that the כוונה our גמרא is referring to is simply the כוונה necessary to make the act of removing a shoe into a מעשה חליצה. In other words, she doesn’t need to think about קנין but rather that it is an act of חליצה and not a random shoe removal.

2.     Our גמרא says that תנאי does not work by חליצה since it cannot be done by a שליח. As mentioned above, there is a discussion as to whether חליצה is a מצוה or not. Even if it were not a מצוה, we certainly find the concept of תנאי by מצוות even though מצוות cannot be done by a שליח in most cases. For example, we are all familiar with the משנה ברורה in סימן תפּ"ט ס"ק ט"ז who talks about counting ספירה early where he says you can count the עומר after שקיעה and make a תנאי that if you remember after nightfall you will not be יוצא with your early counting now. There are many more examples of this. How can ת͏נאי work by a מצוות? There is a similar question asked about נדרים: how can you make a תנאי in נדרים? It is also ליתא בשליחות! The אמרי בינה in ﭏו"ח סימן י"ד answers based on a רמב"ן that says that you don’t need to follow the rules of תנאים in a case of נדרים since נדרים don’t require a special לימוד that תנאי would work since we would say אתי דיבור ומבטל דיבור. The חידוש of בני גד ובני ראובן is that דיבור is מבטל מעשה and only there are you limited by the rules of תנאים. Similarly, by תנאי מצוה, since you need כוונה לצאת we can say אתי דיבור ומבטל מחשבה. 

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